Tales of Maj’Eyal is a roguelike RPG, featuring tactical turn-based combat and advanced character building. Play as one of many unique races and classes in the lore-filled world of Eyal, exploring random dungeons, facing challenging battles, and developing characters with your own tailored mix of abilities and powers.

“Tales of Maj’Eyal (TOME) seems to be a roguelike that refuses to have the shortcomings that are taken for granted in the genre.”
Dorkadia

“Even within a single class, there’s a lot of depth and tactical nuance to discover.”
Indiestatik

About This Game

Tales of Maj’Eyal is a roguelike RPG, featuring tactical turn-based combat and advanced character building. Play as one of many unique races and classes in the lore-filled world of Eyal, exploring random dungeons, facing challenging battles, and developing characters with your own tailored mix of abilities and powers.
With a modern graphical and customisable interface, intuitive mouse control, streamlined mechanics and deep, challenging combat, online stats and character sheets, Tales of Maj’Eyal offers engaging roguelike gameplay for the 21st century.

Key features:

Focus on randomly generated tactical battles

Rich set of very unique classes

Unlocks & achievements progression

Rich world with its own history which slowly reveal during the game

No consumables, no grinding

Turn based: think before you act!

Simple, easy to use interface

Easy modding support with Workshop integration

Buyers will get all the extra features that normal donators get. You can test for free on te4.org

That was my starting point with ToME(4), aka Tales of Maj'Eyal. I'm not really a fan of the genre, though I am a fan of tactical RPGs. It was only after some interesting comments on another game forum (Grim Dawn, great game, look it up) that I decided to give ToME a try.

Unlike some other rogue-likes, ToME gives you the option to play softcore. There are varying difficulty levels in addition to different degrees of 'rogue-like-ness' (multiple lives; from 1 to infinite). The classes vary from basic and simple (Bulwark, Rogue, Archmage, etc) to surprisingly unique (Mindslayer, Oozemancer, Solipsist, etc). The unlock system can be a pain, but it does encourage you to progress through the game, explore and play various archetypes.

The lore is great; the world has been excellently crafted (imo). While it doesn't read like a AAA novel, the depth of the backstory is pretty astonishing considering it's been done primarily by one man (props Darkgod).

When it comes to the gameplay, everything is surprisingly newbie-friendly (for a rogue-like). The UI is simple and easy, the controls are variable (keyboard and/or mouse, re-bindable) and the overly-complex item usage often found in the genre has been notably streamlined.

The graphics are solid. Now, take that with a grain of salt; this is a 2d game of tiles and sprites. If you're anticipating something like Dragon Age, you're going to be disappointed. I know that I was unpleasantly surprised. That being said, it has definitely grown on me and it certainly gives enough information on what's happening.

All that being said, this IS a roguelike. You WILL walk around a corner/open a door/open a chest and get exploded. Careful, cautious play is highly encouraged.

Overall, if you find yourself wanting to try out a roguelike but finding they are a little too 'hardcore' for you, give ToME a try. It's the only roguelike that I have found myself returning to, time after time.

That game can be described in one word: amazing.I mean, beside being such a complex game created and maintained by one dev, it has dozen of features and things that make it even better:- Humor. Dialogues, story, everything is filled with dark, hidden, or obvious humor. Even the achievements have sometimes the best names I've ever seen ("I cleared the room of death and all I got was this lousy achievement!")- Death. You can probably die a thousand times differently. - Death (again). You can choose to have an amount of lives to spend, or you can go in full Roguelike-Permadeath-Nightmare/Madness difficulty, but in that game, you will die a lot, that's for sure.- Network. No multiplayer, but just a global chat, that also let you know when another payer achieves something, or DIES. So you know you're not alone.- MOD THAT GAME TO DEATH- You have so many classes and races to play as and to combine in the vanilla, you probably won't even know what to play anymore after you modded the game to death. There is probably a character-mod for every single creature in the game. There is even a mod that allows you to play as a TREE.- B*tch, I'm a Mega Turtle Storm Knight- The story is a big part of the game. TomE isn't a simple randomly-generated-try-or-die-exploring-maze Roguelike. It has continents, locations, races, people, events of the past, yeah, a story.- B*tch, I'm a Star Elf Paradox Mage- There are so many items, you don't know if it's possible to have something balanced in that. And a lot of the items have a story, and special abilities. Also, you're not limited, in terms of what you wanna wear. Wanna be a human mage that shoots fire with his sword ? Go ahead.- B*tch, I'm a Dwarf Arcane Gladiator

Good roguelike, technically an evolution of the old Tales of Middle Earth Angband variant but you won't notice unless you've played the old ToME. It's quite forgiving for the genre. It's not nearly as spoiler-heavy as Nethack or ADOM, and while it doesn't have the same "transparency" as Dungeon Crawl, it tends to be a little easier. There is a multiple-life "adventure" mode which can be turned off. There are essentially no consumables in the game; the roles typically filled by these are instead unlimited-use abilities subject to cooldowns after use.

One interesting feature is that if you log in to play, there is an in-game chatroom. The online population rarely reaches above 200, so the chatroom isn't actually too cluttered. I have frequently seen developers online answering questions/taking bug reports.

This game is available for free on the developer's website, but there is one class and a few other minor features that are only available in the paid version.

So let me start out by saying that Tales of Maj'Eyal is probably one of the best RPG/Roguelikes I have ever played, hands down. For the TL;DR people: The game is amazing, but completing it on normal difficulty will take hundreds of hours because end-game balance is too dependent on early-game character development. The game becomes unwinnable 30 hours before you realize it. For the rest of us: Keep reading, and I think you will understand.

ToME has 26 classes at the time of this writing, all of which feel and play very differently. Like most RPGs, skill points are gained upon leveling and can be used for both active and passive effects. The skills for each class are unique and allow players to develop their own playstyles, though generally each class has its own style of combat and a playstyle that rewards sticking to their class-specific strengths. Summoners draw hordes of creatures to overwhelm opponents, archmages channel elements to great effect over an area, and rogues set traps and use stealth to outmaneuver or outwit opponents. There are even more creative classes in here, like a time warden (or time mage) that specializes in temporal effects and paradoxes.The world has tons of surprises and interesting levels/areas to explore, acceptable story and interaction (for an old-school roguelike) and though nothing ever changes, the vast variety of mechanics assured that the game did not get old for me after 90 hours of gameplay, and likely would not for another 90 hours.

But Tales of Maj'Eyal does commit one assault upon the unwritten laws of successful developers, which is a learning curve that feels more like a cliff than a slope.The tutorial explains a little of the game's mechanics, but understanding is better gained by blundering through the world and slowly learning what each of the many confusing formulas and statistics mean, and how important they are to the core gameplay. It takes dedication to keep coming back when mountains of unknown skills and abilities assail you from every side, and through trial-and-error, learn to slowly overcome that mountain. And believe-it-or-not, I actually enjoyed the game very much once I crossed the barrier between hopeless bungler and still-hopeless-but-educated noob.

The true problem with the game is that it can become unwinnable very early on, and the players will never even know. The may even feel overpowered for a while, as they make one-strike KOs against hordes of enemies and pass tens of dungeons without a serious challenge in any of them. Then suddenly, a rare varient, a beligerant abomination of a boss-class monstrosity strikes, and they find themselves hopelessly outmatched, their only recourse to grind for levels.

This is the summation: even with permadeath turned off, you can make a mistake in your character build early on and not realize that your character is doomed until late-game, when you have already invested thirty-or-more hours into their development. So you will tragically blunder on, dying every few floors until you finally realize that your goal is impossible and you must start the game over again from the beginning. Worse, if you play with limited or full permadeath (as I did), you may be destroyed by rare variants before the game is even supposed to become difficult again.Compounding this issue is the fact that there is no way to carry multiple saves in this game. You cannot save before making a major decision and restore if your decision was wrong, and copying the save files in and out does not remove this problem. You save upon entering a dungeon, entering the worldmap, or dying, so saving often is required as reloading will often be the only way to escape an impossible situation.

If the game were balanced so that a non-ideal build could still win the game, or ideal builds were easier to achieve, or at least saving to multiple save files was allowed, I would recommend Tales of Maj'Eyal as it is an interesting game that supports a wide variety of skill sets and play styles. But because of the intense difficulty and the almost impossible foresight required to win the game, it sits still-unfinished in my library and will likely remain that way for many days to come. A good game, but not recommended to anyone without weeks to burn away and incredible patience for doing so.

*Full disclosure here - I played the game on 'normal' difficulty for every playthrough. There is an easier difficulty that decreases the monsters' strength/abilities by 30%, but it does not give classes, races or achievements and so it does not appeal to those like me who want to feel they are accomplishing something while playing.

Excellent game, if stat screens make your pants feel funny, I reccomend this game, it is truly one of the best modern roguelikes, with many interesting mechanics, very different classes, varied races, an interesting world and lore. I love it.

Tons of content, and it's even free. I must have played like 200 hours before acquiring it on steam, because DarkGod deserves the money, and a game like this for this low price is almost a steal,

The game starts out being relatively simple to play, with few races and classes avaliable, and few complicated mechanics, but as you progress in your runs and do different stuff, you unlock interesting new races and classes.

Hell, you can time travel. TIME. TRAVEL.

One of the best parts is that, in order to unlock classes and races, you have to do some pretty interesting things. For example, unlocking mages requires that you find the existence of mages, and some important finds affect later playthroughs, like finding the anti-magic people of Zigur or a certain chest that once you find all your characters start with.

This game is so awesome, that it helped me stay sane during a week of post-surgery lying face-down on a hospital bed.

I reccomend this. Seriously, if you like roguelikes and don't mind text, give this a try for free at te4's page, and I strongly reccomend buying it, it barely gives you features, mostly cosmetic ones, but something of this scale deserves a purchase, and for this price, it is well worth it.

Tales of Maj'Eyal (TOME) is a viciously addictive roguelike adventure which contains a number of key features that both improve the gaming experience overall and crucially distances itself from other run-of-the-mill roguelikes. It is 2D and turn based, preferring gameplay and depth over graphical wizardry.

One important distinction between TOME and other roguelikes is the lack of emphasis on procedural generation. TOME actually has a plot, one that spans continents and the void between worlds, a story of darkness, magic and of course world domination. Throughout each playthrough, the story is the same, albeit with some slight alterations/additions depending on the actions you take and the starting class you select. There is a world map, and the major story locations do not change. Although the layout of each dungeon is procedurally generated, this is not empasised as a selling point of the game - it is merely a tool used to highlight the other qualities this game possesses. And boy are there a lot of qualities.

First and foremost - the character classes. Good luck finding a more comprehensive, deep and exciting set of classes in any other roguelike, or any other GAME for that matter. TOME has over 15 of these, ranging from the stalwart Bulwark to the insidious Shadowblade to the righteous Sun Paladin, TOME has you covered for any kind of playstyle you wish to try. Each class then has a vast array of talent branches to follow, and the branches you choose to develop will essentially create a subset of the class you have chosen. The customisation possibilities are massive, resulting in a lot of replayability and tactical flexibility.

Combat is a highly tactical turn based affair, with a strong emphasis on positioning, cooldowns, and your innate knowledge of your own abilities versus your opponent's. Once within your view, every enemy you encounter can be right-clicked on to view their statistics, abilities (passive and active) and resistances. There are no consumables in TOME. The use of each of your skills and items works on a cooldown system, and managing these cooldowns effectively will make the difference between you slaying a boss or becoming a small stain on a tower floor.

And believe me, the latter will happen far more often than the former if you're not prepared, because TOME is HARD. Hard as in one-hit-kill hard. Hard as in the game gives you 3 options - Rogulike (1 life), Adventure (gain lives as you level up) and Exploration (infinite lives) - and taking the Roguelike option early on will result in tears. Hard as in some of the more powerful enemies in the game are comprised of two separate random character classes, and God help you if you face one with two even remotely synergistic classes under its belt.

And to be honest, if there's one thing that drives me nuts about TOME, it is the difficulty. No doubt this makes me a console casual, but I'm serious. The difficulty of TOME is not embedded within the general gameplay, such as a game like Dark Souls, but rather in its frightening inconsistency of enemy threat. The existence of enemies with randomly combined abilities, together with the fact that there are over 10 different damage types (Fire Cold Darkness Light Mind Temporal Blight Nature bleh) means that at some point (normally after you've spent 10 minutes breezing through a horde of useless trash mobs) you will suddenly bump into a Godlike terror that sends you screaming into the abyss of death with a single, sloppy blink, simply due to having the perfect storm of resistances, abilities and relative level that results in a big tick in the Rekt column. Despite my affection for this wonderful, deep and mechanically interesting game, it is also by far the game I have rage-quitted the most.

TL:DR Version....

Good - Excellent character classes, tactical combat and involving storyline.

Bad - Insane difficulty spikes

Overall - if you enjoy a good tough roguelike, you should already have this game!

A pretty good rogue. It's not about graphics but the gameplay obviously. What really works for me personally about the game is that it is effectively one long endurance battle(I've been a long distance runner for many years and it's a similar mentality). It's randomized, progression is inevitable(both in your character, and forced upon you), you can choose a number of ways to fight between the various classes, etc. but again you must always be alert in order to succeed. Or you lose everything.

I enjoy not feeling completely alone in this game.... because it has a chat. Sure, it's most obvious use is for help questions, but it's much more like dark souls in that you see people dying, world events occurring, and what forms is a sense of unity in the community despite everyone being alone on their own journey.

The game is free from the website, but why not buy it for the cheap price anyway?Fun to play when you need something casual, too.

Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME4) is a fantastic take on the modern rogue-like. The developer made smart design choices like getting rid of unnessary potions and hunger mechanics . This really helps to streamline the rogue-like genre. Tack on it's intricate class and character progression systems and you've got a unique and fun game that keeps you coming back for more.

One of the best roguelikes ever created. Ot successfully blends replayability, unlocks, lore, and a fully featured and challenging campaign together to make a satisfying and murderous whole. If you enjoy roguelikes, you absolutely cannot go wrong with this game.

it feels a little clunky. I dont like the dungeon layouts very much. but... wow this is like od school ultima meets nethack. Like moria taken to an extreme.

The play is mostly geared aournd chacter progresion.

the combat feels very lopsided. things are generally really easy to kill or extremely deadly. i do not like that much. id prefer a little less variance in the monster toughness.

game play is a bit repetive but that is kind of expected.

there is a lot of class content. items are very diablo or mmo like. lots of magic very little is useful.

charcter classes have pretty different play syles. more classes unlock as the game world is explored.

overall its not a bad game. a little bit of a learning curve but it wasnt a painful one really. but i have beaten nethack so... casual gamer may not get it.

its pretty well done though. if you like the old school feel and can overlook the dungeon layouts and have some patience to learn the game... it will surely entertain for a long time. if only off and on.

A very traditional hard-as-balls roguelike. What sets this apart from other genrecompetitors like DCSS or nethack is the very accessible interface and overall decent presentation with a very good default tileset (that can be swapped out, if you feel like it).

Make no mistake, I have barely scratched the surface of what this game holds. But there is an insame amount of stuff in this, half a dozen races, several "sub"races, classes with subclasses and almost all of them come with a unique opening. Very impressive stuff. And everytime I die, even if its in the early stages due to some unfair RNG, I still keep rerolling thanks to the massive amounts of content, every run is different and you will always find another titbit of lore or a new quest.

Its hard to not miss the references to other fantasy worlds. This used to be set in the Tolkien universe, but for the sake of it being a commercial product, all of the connections had to be removed. Still it holds an interesting world with unique characters and well-written lore.

If you're into roguelikes, ToME is almost a mustplay. It takes a lot of time to get used to its "rogueiness" and I recommend changing some of the horrible default keybindings, but once you get out of that beginnerslump, you don't want to stop playing.

With over 1350, this certainly is the game with the most achievements I've ever played.

Rougelikes have become increasing gameified lately, TOME however, is the real deal. It takes a hardcore rougelike and wraps it in an easy to access package. The depth of gameplay contained within this game is amazing! If you find yourself enjoying the flood of new "rougelike" games that are crowding the steam storefront, then do yourself a favor and try this game.

One of the most accessible, fun, and charming roguelikes out there. It has a constant feeling of progression, a great selection of character types, and a hell of an upgrade tree for each of the characters. Highly recommended.